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Every time the destitution on a First Nation reserve piques the attention of non-aboriginals - the E. coli in Kashechewan's drinking water, the gasoline-sniffing epidemic at Davis Inlet, the fetid, ramshackle housing at Attawapiskat - some commentator will insist the problem is federal indifference.

But it is not a lack of money or attention that has led to such Third World conditions in the midst of one of the most prosperous nations on earth. If anything, it is too much money. We're killing our First Nations with kindness, not neglect.

Consider there are 30 federal departments or agencies that each year among them spend more than $10 billion on the fewer than 400,000 aboriginals who live on the country's 630 reserves. That's more than 5% of the federal operating budget on just over 1% of the national population.

On a per capita basis, the feds spend nearly $25,000 on every aboriginal man, woman and child who lives on a reserve. Of that, more than $13,000 goes directly to local band councils to pay for reserve operations that include schools and health care. Another $4,000 to $5,000 per resident goes annually to build or repair housing. That's upwards of $18,000 per person in direct cash payments.

By comparison, the federal government spends just $7,800 per non-reserve citizen. And these numbers do not include contributions from provincial governments, resource royalties, casinos and gaming or nearby businesses that use land subject to land claims disputes.

Oilsands companies, for instance, together do $1.3 billion annually in business with aboriginal-owned companies. And the De Beers Victor diamond mine near Attawapiskat (whose celebrity chief Theresa Spence has been on a soup-only diet for more than a month demanding more federal money) has done $325 million in band-based business in the past five years.

Beyond the health benefits ordinary Canadians receive through their provincial health systems, Ottawa also pays for dental care, prescriptions, eye glasses and physical therapy for First Nation's people who will take advantage of such treatments.

Then there are the tax exemptions available to aboriginal Canadians. These have been curtailed a bit in recent years. For instance, for aboriginal income to be exempt from income tax it must now be earned on a reserve.

This wasn't always the case. Until the mid-2000s, it was possible for an aboriginal doctor, for instance, to work off-reserve in a city clinic but pay himself from a professional corporation based on a reserve and avoid tax. Now his practice would have to be on a reserve for him to receive the same exemption.

Still, aboriginals do not pay income tax on on-reserve income. That's one of the reasons band council elections are so hotly contested. It is common for band councillors to make $70,000 or more a year, tax-free. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, nearly 100 of 630 chiefs in Canada make the same or more than their provincial premiers even though the average reserve has 600 or fewer residents.

Clearly, money is not the source of First Nations' problems. So what explains the obvious gaps in education, housing, employment and income between on-reserve aboriginals and the rest of Canadians?

In the next two parts, I will examine the causes of the mess our First Nations find themselves in, including the unrealistic legal and constitutional expectations that border on myth or even delusion, the lousy governance on reserves and the soft prejudice among non-aboriginal elites that has fuelled a culture of victimhood, permitted aboriginal leaders to blame everyone else for their problems and convince themselves that someone else must provide them a solution.

It's a perfect storm of political correctness and too much generosity.

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Killing our First Nations with kindness

Every time the destitution on a First Nation reserve piques the attention of non-aboriginals - the E. coli in Kashechewan's drinking water, the gasoline-sniffing epidemic at Davis Inlet, the fetid, ramshackle housing at Attawapiskat - some commentator will insist the problem is federal indifference.

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